Probably the very first time that Jon ‘Active’ Elliott came over… / Alain of Nabate looking for trades (pics by Massimo Moscarelli)

This edition of the Leed festival was totally fucked up, the only reason why ‘N.O.F.’ played on Sunday was because Françoise [‘Hazel’ Lepers] and Wim [Vandekerckhove] came to my house to drag me along: I had no intention to come. Apparently a bus-load of Swiss chaos-punks thought it was a good idea to come up to Ieper that weekend and demonstrate the ‘Exploited’ version of anarchy. The whole Saturday they had been nagging about having no money to pay the entrance and that punk had to be free. But they did find it OK to drive their bus-wreck all the way to Ieper at 30 litres per 100 km and buy beer in the grocery-store around the corner. Just say that paying the entrance is not a priority in stead of lying not to have any money. Whatever, each hour things were getting less and less pleasant and by the evening they had picked out a few ‘victims’ to let he whole thing explode… Unfortunately for them, they had chosen Hans Verbeke as their target. Lesson # 1: never choose someone who will fight back without a problem and grew up in the streets… The “punks” started to hassle Chantal (Hans’ girlfriend at that time) so Hans grabs his baseball-bat from UJ’s car and wacks one of those guys over the head. This, of course, sets the whole thing ablaze with all crust-punks hearing that straight-edgers are beating up poor beer-drinking punks: total chaos. Hans and some of us walk in to the pub and barricade the door while some 20 rampaging and drunk crusties shouting murder and fire, trying to break down the door. Luckily the lads of ‘Doom’ were still sober and smarter than their adherents and drove Hans off in their van. Eternal thanks for that because otherwise things could’ve gotten really out of hand. While all this was going most people were in the big hall in the back. What I always disliked about this episode is that Bruno and Jan called this a minor incident, something to forget fast. Apparently it wasn’t necessary to remove the Swiss assholes or address the guys from ‘Hiatus’ who were on their side. It’s all a long time ago but it remains one of the all time lows of all these years at the V.V.

Jeroen Lauwers (see also the interview he did with Willy ‘Hiatus’)

‘N.O.F.’ played in their new line-up (announced in the newsletter). From April 1993 on that was: Wim Vandekerckhove (guitar; also ‘Blindfold’ vocalist’), Filip Devolder (who did the ‘Silent Water’ project/band; drums), Ed(ward) Verhaeghe (vocals) and Jeroen ‘Goofy’ Lauwers (bass).

‘Nations On Fire’ (photo by Massimo Moscarelli)

‘Eversor’, a band from Pesaro, started out as as a thrash metal-band in 1985 but by then they played heartfelt, melodic HC (they were compared with bands such as ‘Sensefield’ and ‘Lifetime’): Marco Morosini (bass), Lele Morosini (guitar & vocals) and Federico Sarti had replaced Enrico ‘Eric Lumen’ Giampaoli (drums). Later the brothers continued to play together in ‘The Miles Apart’. Marco also did a distro, called Cataclysm. The band came over again to play on 96-09-20.

‘Strength Of The Will’ had played here already on 92-09-06. Filip Staes (ex ‘Exhaustless Revolt’) played guitar, Jan Beckers sang, his brother Maarten played the drums. The bros were from the Tongeren area and Filip resisided in Hoboken, near Anwterp. The band disappeared when ‘Kindred’ started. Filip believes ‘S.O.T.W.’ played also with ‘Wheel Of Progress’ at the V.V. but I’ve no memories/indications of that.

After a “makeshift” ‘Hiatus’ (93-07-04), we got the ‘full blast’ treatment again. The set was probably mainly from the LP From Resignation…To Revolt, that was recorded in March (at Cats studio in Brugge) with Azill (guitar), Wills (vocals), Ben (drums), Phil (guitar) and Fred Alabas (bass). I think around that time Eric ‘React’ had the live split-tape (together with ‘Doom’; recordings from the gig at ‘La Zone’ in Liège 93-02-26) available. That was a benefit for the Flamands Roses [LGBTQIF]. The tracks for their split-7” with ‘Subcaos’ were recorded live in Brno (Czech Republic) on 93-06-20. 4 songs from the same gig were used on the Polish Bastards split-7” with ‘Fleas & Lice’ (Polish nazi skinheads attacked the band in Gdansk in June ‘93.) Their gig in Auch (France) on 93-08-17 was also recorded: Fred Jourdan put it out on tape (with live tracks of ‘Health Hazard’) under the name Don’t Think With Your Dick… Around that time there was also the split-7” with ‘Doom’ (Flat Earth recs).

Brob

I was on tour with ‘Eversor’ (‘Lumen’ wasn’t in the band anymore at that time, it was the Morosini brothers -Marco and Lele- and Federico). A rented van was our house. The day before they played near Stuttgart, then we travelled all the night toward Belgium. It was the longest travel of my life, like a journey to the moon. Distances were longer in those times. So we arrived at the place, I changed my T-shirt with an X-Force one (the comic) because of the X (as for SxE). But no one noticed it. I was just a guy with a comic T-shirt in a punk place. Absolutely no memory about the concert. I only remember the breakfast in the morning and the van that took the road towards home…

Massimo Moscarelli (Rome)

Playing at that fest was a big honour for us… At the time we were on our very first small tour abroad and the night before we played in Stuttgart with ‘4 Walls Falling’ so we drove all night to Ieper to be there from the very beginning. I remember many people from all over Europe and we were a bit scared to play after ‘Nations On Fire’ and ‘Hiatus’… Both bands had a killer live reputation. We took the stage to a smaller audience but still “big” for us at the time, and played a very tight set. Very few people knew us, our music back in that days was still crossover/thrash but I was suprpised a couple of people who were coming to see us, approached us. Of course we met Bruno for the first time… He was super nice as usual. I asked if we were supposed to do a soundcheck; he smiled and said “No soundcheck, this is a punkrock fest.”… I still remember it!!!

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Rob Franssen [‘F.T.F.’] was also involved in this brawl. :-)
Barricading the kitchen of the old Vort’n Vis…prepared to stab the angry lynch-mob that wanted to kick our asses…

In my opinion it was NEVER a minor incident… The folks from ‘Hiatus’ took the side of the aggressors, because they where stuck in their pre-judice towards straight-edge. This after we lent equipment to who-ever played (‘Hiatus’ was one of them). I personally felt that I got no support at all from the V.V. at that time, except for a few people. I volunteered at the entrance for that day and got theatened, verbally insulted and in the end it got that far that those fuckers slapped my girlfriend in the face, kicked me in the face. And when I finally snapped after a whole day, I literally had to fight my way out in a 4 versus 1 battle, so a stick was the only and final solution to end this bullshit. Afterwards I was called an aggressor and a fascist. It was very stupid and I felt bitter and stayed at home the next day, being pushed away out of my own environment/home that was called V.V.

@Jeroen Lauwers : When did I called this “a minor incident”? They hassled me already the evening before. And some hours before the incident with Hans, they tried to push their way inside in a violent way. Then I grabbed a baseball-bat to beat the shit out of them. I didn’t want to be intimidated in my own place. But other VV-cooperators stopped me. Hours later I was on the street at the front-door to regulate some passing traffic. One of the assholes wanted to beat me but another Swiss stopped him. Shortly after they attacked Hans and he defended himself with a table-leg of a broken bar-table. I was one of the people that barricaded the front-door. Thus: it was dangerous for me too. The weeks after this incident I was disgusted and wrote a reaction in the Vort’n Vis newsletter. Maybe memories are blurred after 22 years. But it’s absolutely NOT TRUE that this was “a minor incident” for me. See my reaction ‘Weekend punx suck!‘…